Not just for the birds
"What's in a name? That we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." --William Shakespeare I've never called myself an upland hunter. I don't know why, but maybe it's too broad of a term. I don't hunt quail or pheasant, and don't usually go out of my way to hunt ruffed …
Our home in the country, Salubrious Basecamp as we affectionately call it, has seen a flurry of adventurous friends and family, hunters and non-hunters, visiting us the past couple of months, each of them wanting a chance to see what all the chukar hunting fuss is all about. We love that our visitors will take …
If you've never been to Hells Canyon on the Idaho/Oregon border before, the first thing you notice as you're driving down the long, narrow, windy road of Highway 71 and descending deep into the canyon are the very steep hillsides covered in sagebrush, bitterbrush, golden-colored grasses and lots of rocks. Some people say, "It's no …
"The lunar landscapes above and below the conifer forests that necklace western mountains, the "chukar hotels" (rock outcroppings used by birds), and the overwhelming panorama that negates any notion of supremacy man might harbor is witnessed only by a small percentage of hunters. Climbing defines hunting in the West. There was elation when, after a …
Preparing for tomorrow's season opener... Besides making sure we have the shells we need, everything is charged, deciding where we'll go, I've also been going through photos from last season and reminiscing more about it. Tomorrow, it will be out with the old and in with the new season. Here are some of my favorite …
We anticipate a lot things. The big yellow school bus recently started up its route again driving back and forth on our gravel road twice a day, spewing a cloud of dust behind it. We knew that would happen, just as we knew Bob would be returning to the classroom to teach literature and poetry …
"I can't wait for chukar hunting season," Bob said just yesterday. We have just over 6 months now. We need time to recover. These are some snapshots of the 2015/2016 season mostly from down in the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and a few at the Cecil Andrus Wildlife Management Area. We feel blessed to …
After hiking more miles and vertical feet than ever, the season ended too soon for us. January in this part of Idaho brought us less than ideal hunting conditions. We didn't get out as much as we wanted to. We suffered through seemingly incessant weeks of thick fog, freezing temps, and post-holing crusty snow. It …
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. -Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) Some of Leslie's chukar hunting landscape photos from this fall and winter... Have a wonderful holiday. Peace on Earth.
Last week while searching for a recipe, I found an old crinkled recipe clipped years ago from a magazine. The original recipe, courtesy of Al Roker, uses chicken coated with a pecan-cornmeal crust and then oven-fried. Recently, we've thought about the strangeness of chukar hunting. Al Roker and chukar in the same sentence, now that's …